Series 1 Financial Abuse

Series 1 Episode 6
11 min

NARRATOR: New Zealand has the highest rate of domestic abuse per capita in the developed world.
Abuse needs silence to thrive.
In this series, Simonne Butler, herself the survivor of a vicious attack that nearly took her life, meets those brave enough to break their silence.

These are their stories.

NARRATOR: While making this series, Simonne's discovered that abuse comes in many guises, and it affects both poor and rich.

One type that is often overlooked, and vastly underreported, is financial abuse.

That's why she's here today meeting Sarah.

Sarah has never spoken publicly before about her ordeal.

To protect her, her story is voiced by an actor, and Sarah isn't her real name.

SARAH: I guess I'd become increasingly conscious that what was going on in my household wasn't normal.

NARRATOR: Her story is quite different from Simonne's. It isn't one of physical violence, but it turns out they have much more in common than Simonne thought.

SIMONNE: I fell in love with a man when I was in my early 20s.

I didn't really understand what financial abuse was.

I had a job, and so all my money went to paying all of the bills.

You know, it was just one of those things that helped to control me.

SARAH: You don't really think of the financial stuff as being a form of abuse.

It never occurred to me that what was going on was abuse.

NARRATOR: As they talk, a familiar pattern emerges.

SIMONNE: I got phone calls, sometimes 20, 30, 40 times a day, you know, trying to do my work.

SARAH: I had those! And there'd be times that I'd actually have to turn the phone off and then deal with them later.

Why wasn't I answering the phone?

It never occurred to me that that was control.

SIMONNE: I had a very big physical journey as well.

I had a bilateral replantation surgery, which means both my hands were sewn back on.

He tried to kill me.

I was still planning to leave, but I didn't get there, and I got choppered out and sent to hospital for three months.

SARAH: There was never any physical abuse.

There was physical intimidation, but there was never physical abuse.

And I always made it clear to him that if he laid one hand on me, I was gone.

I just thought abuse was being hit.

Yeah, so I was a professional earning good money, in the highest income tax bracket, and I finished that job to take care of my first child.

So for the first time ever in our relationship, I was dependent on him for an income, and I think he really saw himself as being in a position of control from that point on.

I remember I spent some money one day on a totally justifiable bill.

I felt scared after I did that and I was like, wait on a second.

Why am I feeling scared for paying a bill?

NARRATOR: She had good reason to be worried.

Sarah, once a highly paid executive, was now struggling to feed her family.

SARAH: I actually took photos of our pantry in the last weeks before I left, which had no food in it.

Just a bottle of oil and some other random things that you couldn't even make a meal with.

I showed him the photo and I'm like, can you not see that there is something about this that isn't normal?

SIMONNE: What was the point that you really felt was your rock bottom?

SARAH: That would be when we became homeless.

We'd been given a 90-day notice on the house that we lived in.

As the day came closer, I felt more and more anxious because we didn't actually have anywhere to go.

The day came and my mind was just... I couldn't comprehend the situation.

We had nowhere to go.

NARRATOR: Shockingly, this wasn't because her husband was short of money.

As Sarah later discovered, it was all about control.

SARAH: So that night we spent the night in a hotel.

The next night was in his friend's garage.

For the next three or four months, the children and I just bounced around from all these different places that he would organise, and he was going off to work as if nothing was happening.

Eventually he organised some sort of flat, and we moved into that.

I remember this one day the neighbours were watching when he came home from work, and he somehow encouraged the kids to come out and play with him on the front lawn.

He never did this.

I watched out the window even more confused.

Wow, we're in this whacko situation and you're on the lawn playing father of the year?

It was all just some show for the neighbours.

That was the place where there was no food, where things were really dire.

It had kind of got to a point of no return.

Just slowly over the years, the worst part about this relationship was the eroding of myself.

Yeah, the eroding of myself, just slowly over time.

SIMONNE: And is that when you called the helpline?

SARAH: Yeah.

It took me a while to work myself into making the call, and then my heart was just pumping.

They just sort of talked very generally about what was acceptable behaviour and what wasn't.

SIMONNE: How do you feel now about making that call?

SARAH: I guess one of the worst things about it for me was that I didn't see myself as a victim.

But by the third conversation, Women's Refuge was mentioned, and that freaked me out a little bit.

And then the day that I actually left was following up a text message from my partner, who was unhappy that I'd paid a bill without his permission.

He saw that as justification for me having no access to the bank accounts.

This was a really big one because it would mean I couldn't feed my children at all.

So I had this phone call with Women's Refuge, and they said somebody can come and get you and take you to a safe house.

Well, I tried to pack some bags.

[cries]

It was amazing.

They came and got me and the kids.

I didn't even know what to say to the kids.

"Where are we going? What are we doing, Mum?"

So I said, "Some friends are going to come and take us to a safe place."

And they were so lovely.

I couldn't believe it.

I hadn't had such kindness in such a long time.

I was scared too.

Really scared of so many things.

Like, how I was going to explain all this.

How did it get to this?

The first night at the Refuge, I felt like the world's biggest loser.

NARRATOR: But of course these negative thoughts were the culmination of years of abuse.

Slowly, Sarah began to come to that realisation, with the help of those around her.

SARAH: But everyone was so lovely at the Refuge, and it was quite incredible.

It just blew me away.

And I thought, wow, there's this other world out there.

I'd always been part of a professional kind of cold world, really, and it was the first time that I had encountered this entirely different world, full of kind, giving people who didn't know me from a bar of soap and were willing to be there.

So over the next couple of weeks, they helped me with really practical things.

Helped with finding a house through Housing New Zealand.

They took me to a Work and Income office to apply for sole parent support.

Of course, we didn't have clothes and stuff like that.

So they got clothes and gave us food.

And I did a little course there about what abuse was.

They showed you a power and control wheel, and it's broken down into these categories.

So you've got financial abuse, psychological abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse.

And I looked at that wheel, and it was like looking at my life.

The only thing that wasn't ticked was physical abuse.

Everything else was there, one hundred percent.

We were really lucky and after about four months we got a house.

Women's Refuge helped us move in.

Not that we had much to move in with, you know, one bag each and then donations from Women's Refuge.

We didn't even have a fridge or a washing machine.

Seriously, this house had nothing in it.

But it was okay, because at least we were safe, and it was our own space.

For the first time in a long time, I felt I could breathe again.

Description

Sarah (not her real name) used to be a high functioning, well paid professional. When she thought of domestic abuse she pictured scenes from the movie Once Were Warriors.
But, what she didn’t realise is that she was slowly becoming subject to extreme financial and psychological abuse by her partner. After taking a break from her career to have children, her partner began withholding access to money. Over the course of several years, things went from bad to worse. Eventually, after briefly becoming homeless, Sarah fled to a women’s refuge with her children. Three years later she’s now in housing living on a benefit and rebuilding her life.

Up Next

Breaking Silence | Season 1 | Episode 6: Financial Abuse | RNZ

9:30

After Kerryn escaped an abusive marriage while living in Australia she discovered first-hand how hard it is for women and their children to restart their lives after leaving the sanctuary of a women’s refuge.

After moving to New Zealand with her young children she founded the Woven Earth charity. Much like in Australia, women’s refuges don’t have the money or staff to help families after they have left a refuge and secured housing. Most often these families move into their new home with little more than the clothes on their back, and with little or no resources to buy much needed household goods.
That’s where Kerryn and her team come in. They collect and store donated household goods until the moment they are needed. They then transport them to the new house and set it up for the family on the day they move in.

Details & Info

Parental Guidance Recommended for Younger Viewers.